How to protect your information with HTTPS Everywhere

The newest extension in the Utilities category of our summer Browser Extensions Series is HTTPS Everywhere extension, which was developed by online privacy advocacy group called Electronic Frontier Foundation.

How it works?

HTTPS Everywhere extension simply encrypting all of your communications while you are browsing the Internet, it adds an “S”, which stands for “Secure” to the standard, unprotected protocol “HTTP”.

Why should I use it?

Most of the popular web sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Gmail now offer for their users settings that allow users to enable “HTTPS” protocol while they visit those websites, however it’s quite hard to monitor every user of the website if he does use it or not. Whenever you introduce your personal information such as logins and passwords, online banking access codes or credit card number on the web page without “HTTPS” protocol in the address bar, you are risking to expose your sensitive data to cyber criminals that are waiting for innocent users.

How does it work?

That is the place where HTTPS Everywhere extension comes in. Compatible with Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Android mobile operating system and now even have a beta version for Google Chrome. This extension compel your web browser to bring you the encrypted and protected version of over two thousand supported web sites, which is greatly reducing the risks that somebody may intercept your personal sensitive data.

Warning

Remember that HTTPS Everywhere cannot shield you from a web site that doesn’t offer any sort of encryption, and not all parts of every website that are secure, so do not despite checking a couple of things before you punch in your Social Security number.

Most of the websites now use a little lock icon near the address bar to demonstrate that communications on that page are being encrypted to ensure your protection, also you can simply check for the “S” toward the end of the “HTTP” in any website’s URL address.

So, if you want to safely browse the Internet, you should always check for these things and learn more about secure surfing in overall, yet HTTPS Everywhere can get you on your path with simply a single click to download and install from the link below.